


Lexica Botania

by screechfox



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Autism, Autistic William Strife, Flower Mages, M/M, future relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-12 23:59:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4499862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screechfox/pseuds/screechfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[DISCONTINUED]</p><p>Strife just wanted to take a vacation with how much work he's done over the past year or so. But when a book is dropped off with his reading, he gets focused on something new - magic, at that. This leads to a distinctly unprofessional attitude and a burgeoning relationship with someone who is definitely more than he seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, summaries for intended long-fics are hard.
> 
> So far I've written 3 and a bit chapters for this, and this is one of the only fics where I can't blame anyone but myself for brainstorming with me.

On his first day on vacation, Strife built himself a little hut. It wasn’t anything fancy, but given that mobs weren’t deterred by his making time to relax, it would have to do. Most people preferred booking a vacation in places that already had homes - or at least tents, or something - but the building process was as relaxing as anything else.

It had taken him a while to find a satisfactory place to build his vacation home, but he'd finally settled on a forest quite a way away from the tower. Every tree seemed full to burst with spring blossoms, a rainbow of colours painting the forest floor in a way that Strife almost felt privileged to see such a sight. According to his scans, as limited as they were now that he was stuck down on this planet, he was alone but for the blooming forest all around him.

Strife wouldn’t admit it out loud, but it was refreshing. Aside from his tree farms and food supplies, he didn’t get to see much of nature back at Solutions Tower, and Parv... Well, they hadn’t been acquainted for a while, and while Strife had tried to brighten his castle up with sunflowers, he’d given up when the blood mage had torn them down. He didn’t need to be told twice, especially when it came to reputation and image.

Sunflowers weren’t exactly characteristic of blood mages, after all. But you couldn’t blame Strife for trying to make Parv’s castle at least a little more appealing than it was when he moved in.

But enough of that thought train, Strife chided himself. He had come here to relax, after all, and dwelling on Alex Parvis was not a recipe for that, especially when every thought of the man made the scars on his skin ache for something.

He’d brought a few books along, to try and keep himself occupied while he worked out what to do in this new place. Nothing special, just a few things Parv had thrown at his head when clearing out his chest. Parv hadn’t seemed too interested in reading - too busy with his quest for ultimate power. Strife had gladly taken them, though he hardly ever found himself with a spare moment that hadn’t been timetabled in.

Now, though. Now he flicked through Parv’s Ars Magica book, mostly unimpressed by the fanciful systems and terminology. The sun beat hot rays down wherever it could find a gap between the blossoms, and he’d undone one button on his shirt, rolled up his sleeves, in an attempt to not overheat as he sat and read.

Strife found himself bored out of his mind as he attempted to work his way through the magic book. Besides the fact that blood magic was just wrong in so many ways, he honestly could not find a single way in which it made logical sense. Or any magic, for that matter. Machines made sense to him - you had a power source, you had storage for it, and once you got a system going, there were very few ways to destroy it.

But magic was unpredictable, from what he could tell. Especially Ars Magica, with unreliable affinities, bulky spells, and nonsensical power sources. (Except for the one that killed things. After Parv, and after before, he could understand the power of blood well enough.)

After about half an hour of attempting to get his mind to understand what, exactly, made this so appealing, Strife gave up. Dropping the book to the floor carelessly (whatever he could salvage from it probably wouldn’t be that damaged), he decided to go and explore the forest around him. Sure, there was no proper conversation to be found, unless his scanner was malfunctioning, but still. Strife could walk around and appreciate the scenery, if nothing else.

Despite the gorgeousness of the scenery and the bird song that seemed to trill with every step that he took, Strife couldn’t help but feel that something was a little off. While, besides the true rainbow of colours, there seemed to be nothing different about this forest, the trees still seemed to loom above him. He could almost feel like they were watching him, but that’s ridiculous. Only the Twilight Forest felt like that, and it was fairly obvious, unless he wandered into a portal without realising it, that this was not the Twilight Forest.

Still, Strife pushed aside his concerns for another day. Today, at least, he needed to relax. That was the purpose of a vacation, after all, and he’d hate to deny something its intended purpose. That would defeat the point, and besides. He’d hate to be denied his purpose, whatever that was.

The wildlife around here seemed dispassionately curious about him, as if it was used to having humans, or human-like beings around it. A young rabbit came up to him and sniffed at his shoes, and for the first time in a while, he cracked a smile, crouching down so he could stroke it carefully. Its fur was soft, and it seemed to enjoy his careful touch for a few moments, before scampering away. Strife almost made to follow it, but stopped himself after a moment of contemplation.

It wouldn’t do to be scaring away all of the wildlife while he was on vacation, now would it?

Eventually he reached what he guessed was the center of the forest. It was only a guess, but the trees seemed even larger here, though no less splendid, and they seemed to reach further up than the others. For a moment he wished that he’d taken an above view of this magnificent place, just so he could see the way the trees must get taller as you delve further in.

Strife almost thought he could see something up in the highest visible branches of the main tree, but then he dismissed it. He hadn’t had much to drink today, so he was probably just seeing things - a good sign that he ought to be heading back to his little hut.

On his way back, he brainstormed how he planned to expand it. It seems nice enough here, so he might as well turn it into a proper vacation home, was his thinking. It wasn’t much more than a few chests, a furnace, a crafting table, and a bed, at the time, but Strife let his mind wander with what he could do with it. It couldn’t be too tall, or the trees would get in the way. But the same went for expanding outwards. Normally he wouldn’t care, as long as he could replant, but he felt oddly uneasy with the idea of cutting down the trees around his new dwelling. A little guilty, too, maybe.

Sooner or later, he managed to get back to the little clearing where he made his home, and sighed with something like relief that everything seemed in order. Except, as he moved to sit back down, he realised that it wasn’t. While he’d left his book on the floor uncaringly, now it sat on top of his chair. As he sighed and reopened it, chalking it up to the local wildlife being helpful, he realised that it wasn’t the same book at all.

The words “Lexica Botania” were written in shining golden ink, and Strife furrowed his brow as he notices the notes left beneath. There’s a few sentences of something that his scanner recognised as a dialect of medieval Minecraftian, that it couldn’t translate. Understandable - this scanner was made for communication, not discovery. But beneath, there was a few words of modern Minecraftian, written in the easily recognisable careful hand of someone who is doing their very best to be legible.

“You can have this.” was all it said, a far cry from the almost-paragraph of the other language above it. Strife found himself even more confused, especially when a simple check revealed to him that he was still the only communication level being in this forest. Unless the local wildlife have learnt how to write recently, that throws his original theory way out of the window.

Still, with nothing better to do, he settled in to read it. Anything’s better than Ars Magica, right?

A few hours later, he was still reading, taking contemplative glances at the flowers that were growing around him. He didn’t know the true difference between a mystical flower and a non-mystical one, but he intended to find out.


	2. The Stranger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should have prefaced this fic in the first place with the fact it was a shamelessly self-indulgent thing. Still, thank you for the good feedback on the first chapter, it really boosted my mood, and I'm hoping I can live up to it in future!

On the fifth day of his holiday, Strife had managed to make a half-decent mana system. It probably wasn’t anything to brag about, though with no basis for comparison, it could have been the best thing in the world. He’d gotten the impression that Mystical Flowers were meant to be at least a little hard to come across, but this forest seemed to be full to burst with them, just as with seemingly every other kind of wildlife.

His little homestead had quickly become less than pristine. He’d put spare flowers everywhere, both of the mystical and non-mystical types, and somehow dirt had tracked onto the floors. He kept meaning to clean it up, but there was always something far more interesting to do - more power sources to build and automate, more flowers to find.

Strife had unbuttoned his shirt one more to make sure he didn’t overheat too much with all the time he spent in the warm sunlight - tempered as it was by the blossoms up above. He could almost swear that his usually sun-starved skin was tanning, but it was hard to tell through the stains of colour that decorated his hands from working with petals.

He’d tried to get them off, but there was only so much time that he’d spend caring for his appearance when there was no one around to see it anyway. And, other than it tingling pleasantly in sunlight, it wasn’t doing him any harm to have splashes of colours all over his skin and clothes. Parv wasn’t around to tease him about it, and, y’know. Good riddance.

He’d brought along enough ingots that he could make what he needed, which was really quite useful. Now that he’d started relaxing in the joys of sunlight, he wasn’t all too eager to give them up until his holiday ended. Then Strife could go back to the usual fare of machines and meetings, and blessed composure. But right now, it was a breath in chaos. One he was beginning to grow more and more glad he’d taken.

The oddity of his Lexica’s appearance still hadn’t left his mind, distracted as he’d been. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much higher technology anywhere near orbit, so he had to settle for trying to manually translate the text underneath the golden title. Strife hadn’t gotten more than a few contextless words, but, annoyingly, his scanner was running out of power.

There was a bit of confliction in his mind at this. On the one hand, with a bit of mining, he could almost certainly find more than enough materials to make it solar powered - he almost wondered why it hadn’t been before, but that was a question he easily knew the answer to. His home planet hadn’t been gifted with nearly as much natural light as Minecraftia, and on Minecraftia, well. Spending time in the Solution Tower and Parv’s cellar in equal measures didn’t often allow for beams of sunlight.

On the other hand... Strife’s mind wondered in leaps and bounds about the viability of powering the scanner with mana. Sure, the mana pools were powered by, and powered in turn, the flowers and the altars, but there’s no reason to think he couldn’t modify the system a little bit.

This holiday was turning out to be a little more in depth than he thought it would be.

After a few hours, as the sun reached its highest point in the sky, and Strife could almost hear the dayblooms humming happily, his tinkering was disturbed by a rustling. Not just any rustling - he knew the sounds of animals quite well, he liked to think. Most obviously, he knew that the vast majority of animals don’t yelp like humanoid creatures.

(When he says vast majority, he refused to think of the days procrastinating his college papers with Xephos, whiling the hours away by watching ridiculous videos on the internet. Strife was fairly concerned about the safety of some of those animals.)

Pushing it aside to investigate later - nothing had attacked him so far in the five days he’d been here - Strife almost managed to refocus on his tinkering. Then there was a thump and an ‘oof’ noise behind him, and he reckoned, for his own safety, he ought to turn around. He’d check the scanner, but it’s generally considered unwise to turn something on when you’re messing with its power source - and he’s had enough electric shocks in his time to know to avoid more if he can help it.

Lying in the middle of Strife’s carefully cultivated plants was a young figure. They were giggling softly to themself, a look of simultaneous amusement and disbelief painted across their face as clear as the skies above. While they collected themself, Strife took a moment to look himself over carefully.

Stained skin bright with green, a rumpled and equally stained dress shirt with two buttons undone (his waistcoat was somewhere safe inside; there’s only so much he’ll let go of in regards to his image.), and a sparking scanner in hand. Not exactly the kind of impression Strife wanted to put across, even if he doubted he has much to offer some forest individual when it comes to solutions.

(A voice in his mind told him, unbidden, that there hadn’t been any people on the scanner in the first place, just standard animals and plants. He ignored it until further notice.)

To be honest, the person seemed pretty scruffy themself, as far as Strife could tell. When they showed no signs of getting up, just of sitting there and giggling softly, Strife smoothed down his shirt as best he can - getting more smudges of blue mana on it - and went to check on them.

Luckily, they hadn’t landed on any particularly valuable flowers. Strife reckoned he could fairly easily repair the damage done, as soon as this odd individual left. Something about them rang a bell in Strife’s mind - a vague, out of key one, that had the marks of Parv all over it - but he ignored that too, for now.

“Um, hello?” He started, more awkwardly than he intended. Strife cleared his throat and tried again, standing as tall as he could. “Excuse me, this is my property. What are you doing here?”

The stranger blinked up at him, pushing themself up into a sitting position. They looked almost indignant, though Strife couldn’t be sure at what, as they ran a hand through messy pink-red hair.

“Your property?” Their voice was as high as expected from their appearance, though Strife suddenly took note of the pointed ears peeking through the aforementioned hair, and wondered if his previous estimation of this stranger’s age was at all accurate. “Excuse you, man, but who, of us, has lived here the longest?”

Strife almost protested that he didn’t live here at all, he was just on holiday, before remembering his decorum. Carefully, he placed the scanner on his work-surface, making a mental note to check it as soon as he’d finished working on it.

“Well, accordin’ to my extensive scans of this area, you haven’t been here at all in the last five days,” Strife retorted, lacing his fingers together and frowning at the stranger. “So I guess that I currently have claim.” The stranger’s expression flickered into something else for a moment, before switching into a cocky grin.

“Well, joke’s on you,” The stranger replied, moving from sitting to standing in one fluid motion. “I’ve been here all along. Who do you think gave you that flower book?” Strife probably could have guessed that himself, sooner or later, what with the crown of pale flowers that adorned the stranger’s head.

Still, he was a little caught off guard by that. This stranger really didn’t seem the type to go handing out books all willy-nilly, what with the confident quirk of their mouth, and the possessive behaviour that was being exhibited.

The stranger took advantage of Strife’s pause to speak again. “Did you think it just dropped from the sky like magic?” They laughed softly at their own joke, however unfunny it was, before quirking a brow at Strife. Strife got the distinct feeling he was being measured up, and he coughed awkwardly, trying to straighten out his shirt to the very best of his ability. The stranger’s grin widened, and suddenly, some of the sharpness seemed to leave their expression.

“I’m just messing with you, man, don’t worry.” They held out a slightly grubby hand with sharp nails, though the movement almost seemed too practiced to be genuine. “If you’re going to be sticking around, there’s no use to be fighting right now. Martyn Littlewood, at your service.”

Strife did a double take, the formerly-a-stranger’s appearance finally clicking into place for him. So this was the famous Martyn Littlewood he’d heard so much about. Well, for a given definition of so much. He knew that the man in front of him liked plants, hated blood magic, and had been abandoned by Parv as soon as he’d started getting suspicious. Oh, and now, that he was surprisingly short.

Still, it wouldn’t do to lose his composure just because he’d been presented with a surprising piece of information. That was not the Strife Solutions way, after all! He reached out his own hand, tanned and short nailed, and nodded as they shook hands. “William Strife, and the same.”

He almost smirked at the glimpse of shock that flickered across Martyn’s face. Clearly he’d heard similar amounts about Strife, which, really, was a boost to his ego. But his mirth faded a bit as jealousy replaced it, an almost hurt look settling on the other’s face. Then Martyn clearly shakes himself, grinning widely and evidently trying to hide the way he’d betrayed himself. But you didn’t get far in business without at least a basic knowledge of reading people - if not an instinctive one.

Martyn nodded, pulling back his hand and shoving it in his pocket casually. He took another look around at Strife’s set up, before nodding, as if his point - whatever that was - had been proven.

“Looks like you’re making better use of that book than I could.” His voice was almost impressed, but mostly just speculative, as if he wasn’t quite sure of what to think of Strife. Then Martyn jumped, and grabbed onto the branch that he’d obviously been trying to hide on earlier. He swings himself onto it with a grace that Strife doesn’t think he’s seen even gymnasts have, before peering back down at Strife.

His hair fell in front of his eyes in a way that Strife would almost call endearing, as he smirked again. “If you’ve really set up shop here, I guess that I’ll see you around, Strife.”

Then Martyn seemed to disappear into the trees somehow, before Strife could get a word in edgeways. He wasn’t quite sure how Martyn had managed it, but he couldn’t judge. At least it was better than little hidden alcoves in Parv’s castle.

With an exasperated sigh, Strife returned to the tinkering he had been doing previously, trying not to spill anymore carefully collected mana on his clothing. Though he contemplated Martyn as he worked, his mind only really returned to him when he experimentally switched the scanner on again.

Strife, unconscious of how he’d appear, whooped in triumph as it worked, and as the new power source showed up on screen. Then he furrowed his brow. Before, knowing that there wasn’t much power left on it, Strife could have dismissed the lack of picking up any other residents as a malfunction.

But now, even though he knew Martyn was living there, and he felt like that should have changed something, somehow... The scanner still showed up with one communication-level resident within the vicinity of the forest. Strife.

 


	3. The Discovery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this a bit earlier than normal for reasons. Hope you enjoy!

On the last day of the third week of his holiday, Strife found out that Martyn couldn’t read. The other had been visiting every so often under the guise of checking out Strife’s things, but, privately, Strife suspected that he was more than a little lonely.

True, it was only deduction that gave him this suspicion. Martyn chattered away even when Strife wasn’t listening, seemingly talking about whatever crossed his mind, and although he seemed connected with the forest, Strife realised that talking to an actual being like him might not come often.

To be fair, now that they’d gotten acquainted, Strife could almost feel like he’d known Martyn for years. He’d heard about his friends, his adventures, the best pranks he’s ever played. Still, Strife felt something was missing. There were very clearly things that Martyn wasn’t telling him, although he had no idea what they were.

One of these things came, however, when Strife finally had the presence of mind to ask why Martyn had given him the Lexica in the first place.

“After all,” Strife motioned to the crown of flowers that still somehow perched on Martyn’s head. “It’s not like you’re not botanically inclined yourself.” It had been bugging him for a while, especially when Martyn seemed so curious about the workings of what Strife was doing.

Strife had given up on trying to seem clean and professional. It was only him and Martyn, after all, so the tan that was slowly growing on his skin, making his bright green freckles stand out even more, didn’t bother him as much. Especially since, from the little evidence he had to go on, Martyn certainly seemed to appreciate the half-reality Strife was giving him.

In response to his question, Martyn shrugged, adjusting some flowers breezily. “Wouldn’t be much use to me, Strifey.” Martyn had picked up use of the same nickname that Parv had, but Strife was fine with that. It seemed less mocking when Martyn said it. “I could hardly make sense of that kind of thing, what with all the stuff I don’t know.”

Strife found that terminology a little vague, but his curiosity was piqued. Martyn seemed to be blushing faintly, though Strife didn’t know if it was out of embarrassment or not. The flush made his blossom-pink skin all the more obvious.

“All the stuff you don’t know?” Strife repeated, cocking a brow. This definitely got him curious about Martyn’s reasoning for giving him the book. To his knowledge, Martyn had managed to get through at least some of Ars Magica with Parv, so it rather perplexed Strife that Botania stumped such an... environmental person.

Martyn murmured something, avoiding looking at Strife for a moment, before he looked up at him and grinned. It seems a little tentative, though, but Strife wasn’t sure what he had to worry about.

“Words, mostly!” Martyn grinned more, shrugging and stroking a finger over the soft petals of the flowers in his hair. “Modern Minecraftian isn’t all that easy, you know?” He mimed writing in the air, shrugging slightly.

It clicked for Strife, at long last, as much as it opened up so many other questions (How old are you? Where are you from? Can you translate your note please?) It wasn’t that the book had been owned by many, many people, spanning many, many ages, it was just that the previous owner had written in his native tongue inside it.

Strife couldn’t blame him, really. He’d write more in his own native tongue if it weren’t for the fact he knew the sheer futility of that. Even Xephos would probably hardly recognise it, and Strife wasn’t about to go sending him letters just for the hell of it.

“Huh.” Strife remarked, non-committally. He hadn’t exactly prepared for situations like this in the past, which had kind of left him a little stranded while his brain attempted to string words into a coherent response. In this particular instance, the coherent response turned out to be, “I could teach you.”

It took a moment for his thoughts to actually catch up with what he said, and another moment for it to process. Then it clicked, and he couldn’t quite believe himself. It’s not that he didn’t like Martyn, but offering to teach him an entire language, basically? For free?

But Martyn’s face lit up like the spring sunshine itself, and Strife already knew that he wasn’t going to end up asking for payment. He didn’t doubt that Martyn would give it, if asked - unless Strife asked for lapis, but he had plenty of that himself. But the sharp, bright smile on his face seemed to make profitless work worthwhile.

Martyn ran a hand through his hair, evidently not so sure how to react himself, but his expression, and the faint blossoming shapes of his blush on his cheeks made it obvious that, no matter how he proceeded, he was delighted.

“What, really?” He spoke, and suddenly there was a mountain of babbling spilling out of his mouth as he bounced on his heels. “I mean, Toby was doing it, but I haven’t seen him since Christmas! And Parv only cared enough to help me muddle through the basics of Ars Magica! I try myself, ‘cause I’m better with speaking than reading or writing, but it’s hard, especially spelling.”

Strife nodded, finding himself understanding, somewhat. In truth, he almost envied Martyn. Sure, while Martyn, y’know, could hardly read or write, he didn’t seem to have any of Strife’s problems with things - problems that tended to make being a businessman much trickier than it would usually be.

On the other hand, he couldn’t exactly find it within his bleeding heart to truly be jealous of Martyn. And hey, now that his mouth had gone and accidentally extended that kind of olive branch to him, he might as well follow through.

After all, that’s one of the rules of being a businessman - always follow through on your promises, or at least make attempts to look like you’re doing so. Strife didn’t understand the second one. It just didn’t seem efficient to make things up and waste precious resources on things you didn’t actually care about.

“Well, if you’re needin’ a teacher, I’m your man. No one’s better with this kind of stuff than Strife, I assure you. Seal of quality guaranteed.” Strife nodded firmly. Sure, language classes weren’t exactly in Strife Solutions’ repertoire, but there was never a bad time to learn. Silently, he reassured himself that this would work to pay back Martyn for the Botania book, which certainly had changed things a lot.

Martyn nodded, looking a little unsure again, but still grinning. Taking a step forward, he stretched, looking up at the sky speculatively. It was getting close to sunset, and, although the forest was well lit, and fairly free of mobs on a good day, Strife guesses he can understand that other people don’t live off coffee.

“Not today, though, man!” Martyn took another step forward, getting all up in Strife’s personal space, though Strife really couldn’t bring himself to mind that much. “Botania boy has got to get himself some beauty sleep, after all.”

Strife stopped himself from saying the first retort that popped into his head, stolen from countless terrible TV shows, and just contented himself with trying not to look dismayed. Nodding, he smoothed his shirt down out of habit. It was less red, now, and more a vibrant rainbow painted onto a red canvas. He hadn’t worn his waistcoat for weeks.

“Ah, of course, of course! Same time tomorrow, Martyn?” They’d sort of set up a schedule that somehow managed to interfere with neither of their routines. Well, Strife doubted Martyn had a routine, and he was trying not to himself, with very little success.

Martyn gave him a salute, then hesitated for a second. Strife blinked at the other as he exhaled, before hopping right up to Strife very quickly.

The next thing Strife knew was soft lips, like flower petals in themselves, pressed against his own with all of the skill of a teenager’s very first kiss. (Not that Strife had much experience with that stuff himself, but he guessed, later on, that he at least had more than Martyn.)

The contact was brief and sloppy, but still warm, and Strife could feel his cheeks burning brightly with green as Martyn hopped down from his tiptoes, tugging off his flower crown and dumping it unceremoniously on Strife’s head.

Then he grinned, and saluted again, almost seeming cocky again. Almost. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Disappearing off into the trees in a way that Strife still hadn’t figured out how he did it, Martyn left Strife standing there, not quite sure what he was feeling besides a vague sense of contentment uncurling in his stomach and his burning cheeks.

‘What in hell was that?’ Strife wondered, staring after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here, my buffer of pre-written chapters comes to an end. Ah, writing.


	4. The Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early chapter just because I felt like it. I'd been trying to write it since April, so I hope it's worth it.

On the first day of the fourth week of his holiday, Strife was jittery all morning. He’d taken apart the idea of the kiss so much in his head that there was no longer any emotion attached to the memory of it. Still, he couldn’t figure out what, exactly, had motivated Martyn to do that. They’d known each other for all of about three weeks, and Strife didn’t think that Minecraftians moved that fast, from what he knew.

Of course, Martyn wasn’t exactly your standard Minecraftian. Of the people he’d met, though, Strife was starting to become pretty convinced that classes had lied and there was no such thing.

So Strife had been busy coming up with things to say when Martyn got there in the evening, trying to prepared for any eventuality. If Martyn didn’t want to talk about it, Strife guessed that they didn’t need to talk about it, and that they could go on like before - Martyn creeping on Strife’s Botania set up and leaving him with far too many questions every single day.

But all the same, Strife kind of didn’t want to. Sure, they’d only known each other properly for a few weeks, but that didn’t mean that Strife wasn’t interested in talking about things, somehow. Of course, the talking bit was the hard bit, and, while Strife could do his best to plan for all eventualities in business scenarios, social situations were much harder to predict, especially when they contained so many variables.

As he waited, Strife carried on looking after his power systems. He had more mana now than he knew what to do with, and was seriously considering taking some back to the tower with him, when he finished his vacation, to conduct experiments on. He’d have to leave out some spare mana pools and figure out a way to make spreaders transfer when a pool was full, just so he didn’t waste the time spent away by collecting nothing.

Strife was carefully repositioning a mana spreader when Martyn finally appeared out of the treetops. Waiting until he’d finished, Strife then turned to the other man.

Martyn had flopped down onto the wooden steps leading into Strife’s house. As usual, he was running his fingers through the soft grass, and Strife watched the trampled patches on his path to the building slowly spring back to life as though they’d never been stepped on. Still, Martyn kept gently stroking the blades of grass, as if they were the fur of an animal, and not simply plants.

Perhaps, to Martyn, they were. What would it be like to feel the world breathing and pulsing around you? Strife watched him for a moment, before swallowing his - fairly momentous - pride and sitting down next to him.

The steps were covered in soil and the stains of petals, so Strife just resigned himself to having to clean these trousers off later. There was a certain amount of… untidiness that he was putting up with, but not that much.

For what seemed like hours to Strife, the silence stretched on. Martyn looked so at peace that Strife almost felt bad disturbing him. But Martyn’s always nattered on when he’s been here, and, even if he didn’t want to, Strife knew that they probably needed to talk.

“So, uh,” He started, coughing self-consciously and breaking off. It got Martyn’s attention, though, and Martyn turned his head to look at Strife, expression entirely unreadable. It made Strife feel even more self-conscious, and vaguely convinced that his cheeks were burning brightly green.

Suddenly convinced that he shouldn’t bring it up after all, Strife quickly changed what he was probably about to say. “How about some Botania, then?” He’d not added much since yesterday, but he could definitely find something to talk about.

Martyn gave him a small smile, nodding. “Sounds like a plan.” Pushing himself up, he almost seemed to offer his hand out to Strife before he pulled back, burying his hands in the pockets of his shorts. Strife didn’t exactly know what to read into that, so he just nodded, a little curtly, and began walking over to his work area.

The silence would have been less off-putting if Strife had still been able to hear the sounds of nature. But all he could hear was his own breathing, and his and Martyn’s footsteps. The forest seemed equally unsociable today as Martyn was - which would have been interesting if Strife hadn’t already been thinking of a million things.

Strife’s various technologies were scattered on his makeshift work benches from earlier, but it was an easy conversation to fall into - even if Martyn only seemed to have experience with Tekkit-era systems, which Strife found a little annoying, really. Not annoying enough that he refused to ramble about even them, but he preferred rambling about his own systems.

Even if Martyn was a chatterbox normally, he always seemed to sit back and let Strife ramble, occasionally piping in with something. This time was no different, minus the curious questions, as he sat on an empty bench and listened to Strife talk about his plans for powering stuff with mana.

Strife was in the middle of explaining the difference between mana and other traditional fuels, when Martyn blurted something out. His rambling stopped abruptly, but he still didn’t catch what had been said, and Martyn was blushing furiously.

“Pardon?” Strife said, frowning at him. Martyn made eye contact for a moment, before glancing away, apparently steeling himself for what he was about to say. Strife could sense that this was going into a hard conversation, so he sat down on the emptiest surface he could find, clicking the switch for his scanner on and off as he waited.

“I said, it doesn’t have to mean anything.” Strife thought he could detect reluctance in that tone, but everything he knew about how best to react failed here. Which, as much as he hated it, gave him one option - improvising.

Strife looked at Martyn, face impassive for a moment. “I don’t know,” He said, pausing for a split-second more than normal after every word, “It seemed like it meant something to me.” Forcing himself to stop fidgeting with the scanner, Strife put it down next to him, resisting the urge to just pick it back up again. “Something pretty big.”

Martyn was avoiding Strife’s eyes. In any other situation, he’d be just fine with that, but now… it made him uncomfortable for reasons he couldn’t put his finger on. “It doesn’t have to,” Martyn muttered, with the air of a petulant child, fidgeting with the edge of his shirt. “It could just be a thing.”

Strife’s never called himself a patient man, and he couldn’t help but want Martyn to get to the point. He honestly couldn’t tell what Martyn felt about the kiss, nor what he himself felt about it. With nothing else to draw on, Strife sighed and tried to work out the best way to phrase what he wanted to ask. After a few moments, he spoke.

“Martyn. Do you want a relationship with me, or was it just a kiss?” It was an uncommonly blunt thing of him to say, but this was him completely out of his depths. The few times Parv had tried to ‘seduce’ him - very badly, Strife might add - it had been through alluring, forbidden magics, and almost certainly not out of an emotional want for romance.

Martyn looked up, eyes wide - clearly put a little off balance himself by that comment. On the other hand, there was suddenly a very notable blush to his already pink cheeks, and what Strife thought was the hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Making a few incoherent noises, Martyn shrugged, eyebrows raising as he clearly attempt to compose himself.

“Well, uh. I guess the first?” His tone was a little hesitant, and Martyn shrugged again, looking straight at Strife now, unblinkingly. It was a little disconcerting how his expressions changed sometimes, unreadable to Strife.

He also had no idea what to say to that. Not being able to read Martyn means that Strife had an awful lot of difficulty working out what the right thing to say was. Was there a right thing to say, in this situation. (Maybe most people didn’t think of it like that.)

“We could work something out?” Strife asked, like it was just another business deal to be made. He took a moment to pause, to think about it. True, he enjoyed Martyn’s company, more than anyone else he spoke to nowadays. Was that enough? What was Martyn’s idea of a relationship? What was his own idea of a relationship?

Those were all questions he wanted answers to, but couldn’t ask. Those were all probably at least a little bit rude.

But he had to settle for what he got, right? (How could they even up-level their current friendship, where they saw each other almost every day?) Strife just had to settle for being completely out of his depths, looking at Martyn.

Martyn slipped off the bench, stepping closer to Strife. Strife didn’t stop him, almost curious about what he was doing. One step at a time, Martyn made his way over to Strife, and looked at his face carefully. While Strife was sitting, they were both eye level with each other, and he felt a little like he was being appraised by a predator, more than a… suitor? Was that the word?

Slowly, giving Strife plenty of warning, Martyn moved to take his hand. At the touch, Strife tensed up, even though Martyn’s skin was as soft as flower petals, and just as gentle.

Martyn grinned hesitantly at him, teeth seeming a little sharper close up, before looking down at Strife’s hand in his own and sighing a little, shaking his head. “Nothing you don’t want, Strife.” Still, he pressed a kiss to Strife’s cheek, before grinning again and stepping backwards a few paces. “No hard feelings, though.”

Strife definitely doesn’t know how to respond to that, trying for a crooked smile. “Hey, I’ll think on it.” He will, at that. Maybe he wasn’t sure now, but that doesn’t mean much about how he’d feel in future.

Martyn grinned wider at that, giving him a tiny salute. Strife hadn’t expected him to take that quite so well, but then, there’s a lot he probably didn’t know about Martyn. “‘Til then, friends?” Martyn asked, not looking away from Strife.

Strife nodded, and picked up the scanner, beginning to fiddle with it again. He almost grinned at Martyn. “Yeah, friends.”


	5. The Transition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spring turns into summer, and changes are made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah, uhhh, so i know it's been about 8 and a half months since the last update (not including the chapter i deleted).
> 
> i am genuinely sorry for that. i got into a bit of a rut with this fic where i got really dissatisfied with everything i wrote for it, and then lots of things have happened since. this is still a short chapter, but it's a necessary one, i think.
> 
> but i'm back, and i have plans for more chapters! though i definitely will not be updating this all too frequently, i will do my best to get this finished.

Just as April had turned into May, May turned into June. The leaves grew ever greener, the day grew ever longer, and Strife found himself tanning even more, much to his slowly dissipating displeasure.

It grew much warmer. No longer could Strife get away with wearing a button up shirt, not when the sun beat down on him even through the trees as he worked. At long last, he’d had to hang it up with his waistcoat and pull out the various soft fabric t-shirts he only wore once in a blue moon.

Martyn seemed delighted, teasing him warmly.

Of course, even as Strife slowly found himself becoming more and more at ease in this forest, the changes that Martyn had gone through seemed somehow more profound, though Martyn didn’t seem to find them of any note.

Suddenly, Martyn’s schedule seemed to change as spring melted into summer in a flash. One week, he wouldn’t visit at all, and then the next week, he’d be at Strife’s home more than his home, letting Strife re-bandage the scratches from his latest endeavours into adventuring.

(What? Strife was certainly of the opinion that he had a steadier hand than Martyn, and there  _ was _ the advantage of actually being able to see what he was doing, which Martyn certainly wouldn’t be able to do.)

It almost uncomfortably reminds Strife of Parvis; the way that danger seemed to excite Martyn like nothing else could, the way that he’d never seen Martyn smile more happily than after he’d returned to tell Strife all about what had happened.

Martyn seemed happy, though, so Strife let it be, not wanting to ruin a good thing.

The really confusing part of Martyn’s sudden changes were really those in his appearance. It had to be linked to Martyn’s confusing lack of showing up on scanners, but Strife didn’t have a clue what that was about, or how on any planet they could be connected.

The other male had tanned even more than Strife was - in only a few weeks, Martyn’s skin had turned from a pale petal-pink to the brown of tree bark. Moss-green freckles dusted his skin lightly, which would probably make him camouflaged without his brightly coloured clothing (mysteriously turned green now, to match his seasonal change, but that was probably due to good sewing than anything else).

Even more puzzling was the fact that his hair had abruptly turned a shining golden colour, speaking of infinite days under the sun. It provided a stark contrast to Strife’s own dirty-blonde hair, which despite him spending plenty of time outside himself nowadays, stubbornly refused to lighten in any way.

When Strife had asked about the change in appearance, Martyn had simply shrugged him off, as if it were usual. Hell, maybe it was, for all Strife knew. But Martyn was remaining frustratingly  tight-lipped in his odd loose-lipped way, so as Strife puzzled out the inner mysteries of Botania, the mystery of Martyn seemed like a good enough thing as any to focus on.

In matters of Botania, of course, he’d barely scratched the surface, but at this point his only option was to give his mana stocks some time to replenish themselves. His copy of the Lexica was worn at the edges now, and Strife was considering transcribing it, as soon as he got some time and electricity on his hands.

Electricity being in short supply, what with the lack of mana to feed into his experimental converter.

It was a slow life in the forest, but Strife… dare to say it, Strife was finding it almost relaxing. 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at screechfoxes on Tumblr. Have a nice day!


End file.
